Between March and October 1917 Russia was perhaps the freest country among the warring powers. Newspapers of every party printed what they liked, and soldiers, sailors, workers and peasants elected committees and soviets everywhere. Yet in eight months the Provisional Government lost almost all its support. The Bolsheviks, a small party in February, were ready to take power by the autumn.

Lenin returns

When the monarchy fell, Lenin was in Switzerland, cut off by the war. The German government, hoping he would weaken Russia's war effort, agreed to let him and other exiles cross Germany. Lenin traveled through Germany by German agreement, in a railway carriage treated as sealed, then on through Sweden and Finland. He arrived at Petrograd's Finland Station on 3 April.

The next day he presented the April Theses, which shocked even many Bolsheviks. He called for no support for the Provisional Government and for all power to pass to the soviets. He demanded an end to the war, confiscation of landed estates and workers' control in industry. Most Bolsheviks in Petrograd, including Stalin, had been offering the government conditional support. Within weeks Lenin won the party over. The party's message was boiled down to a slogan: "Peace, land and bread."

A government losing ground

The government's weakness was the war. In April, a note from the foreign minister Milyukov promising the Allies to fight on to decisive victory set off angry demonstrations, and he was forced out. Moderate socialists, including Kerensky as war minister, joined a coalition. In June Kerensky launched a major offensive, which collapsed within weeks. Desertions soared. In the countryside peasants stopped waiting for the Constituent Assembly and began seizing land. In the cities, factory owners closed plants, and workers formed factory committees and armed Red Guards.

Early in July, soldiers and sailors, egged on by rank and file Bolsheviks, poured into Petrograd demanding that the Soviet take power. In the July Days the armed demonstrations failed, and Bolshevik leaders were arrested or went into hiding. The government published claims that Lenin was a German agent, and he fled to Finland. Trotsky, who had now joined the Bolsheviks, was jailed. Kerensky became prime minister.

The Kornilov affair

Kerensky appointed General Lavr Kornilov as commander in chief to restore discipline. In late August Kornilov ordered troops toward Petrograd. Whether he meant to back Kerensky or to replace him is still debated. Kerensky denounced him as a traitor and turned to the Soviet for help. Railway workers blocked the tracks, agitators talked Kornilov's soldiers out of fighting, and Red Guards were armed. The move collapsed without a battle.

The Kornilov affair discredited Kerensky and boosted the Bolsheviks, who looked like the only party that had been right about the danger of counterrevolution. By early September the Bolsheviks held majorities in the Petrograd and Moscow soviets, and Trotsky became chairman of the Petrograd Soviet. Party membership had grown from perhaps 24,000 in February to well over 200,000 by the party's own count.

The seizure of power

From hiding, Lenin bombarded the Central Committee with demands for an armed rising. On 10 October it voted ten to two in favor. The two opponents, Grigory Zinoviev and Lev Kamenev, argued that the party should wait for the Constituent Assembly and the coming Congress of Soviets. Zinoviev and Kamenev opposed the armed rising in print, in a non-Bolshevik newspaper, so the plan was hardly a secret. The practical work fell to the Military Revolutionary Committee of the Petrograd Soviet, led in practice by Trotsky, which won over the garrison regiments.

On 24 and 25 October, Red Guards, soldiers and sailors occupied bridges, railway stations, the telegraph office and the state bank, mostly without shooting. Kerensky left the city by car to find loyal troops. That night, after a blank shot from the cruiser Aurora, the attackers entered the Winter Palace and arrested the ministers. Few people died.

The Second Congress of Soviets opened that same evening. The Bolsheviks and their allies, the Left Socialist Revolutionaries, held a majority. Mensheviks and moderate Socialist Revolutionaries denounced the rising and walked out, and Trotsky told them to go to the "dustbin of history." The Congress passed two decrees. The Decree on Peace called for an immediate peace without annexations. The Decree on Land abolished private ownership of land and approved peasant seizure of the estates, borrowing heavily from the Socialist Revolutionary program. A new government, the Council of People's Commissars, was formed with Lenin as chairman.

Worked example: an ordinary evening?

Eyewitnesses to 25 October noted something odd. In much of Petrograd, trams ran, restaurants served dinner and theaters stayed open while a government fell a few streets away. Is that evidence for a coup or a revolution? One reading says it shows that a small armed group acted while most people were spectators. Another says it shows that the old government had so little support that almost nobody would defend it, while the soviets that authorized the rising had been elected by workers and soldiers.

Both points can be held at once. Bolshevik slogans, especially peace and land, were genuinely popular by October, and the party had won soviet majorities fairly. But the timing and method, an armed rising on the eve of the Congress, were Lenin's choices, made against the wishes of other socialist parties and some of his own colleagues.